The Lucasville Uprising was a rebellion against oppressive and racist policies at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, OH. Nine inmates and one guard died during the uprising in April of 1993. Today, many people are serving time or condemned to death by the state of Ohio in relation to the uprising. We demand amnesty for all of these inmates. The conditions at SOCF were (and still are) intolerable and unconscionable.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Review of Condemned in SF Bay View.

Review by Denis O’Hearn
When I was asked to write a review of Keith LaMar’s “Condemned,” I
wondered if I was the best person to do it. First of all, I wrote the
foreword to the book. Plus, as you’ll see when you read this book – and I
hope you do – we are the closest of friends, really brothers. That must
mean I am a bit biased, right?Well,
I will admit my bias from the beginning. I regularly visit Keith LaMar,
or Bomani Shakur, as I know him. We correspond and talk on the phone.
He and his comrade Jason Robb have been regular visiting professors (by
phone) to my classes at Binghamton University.
Rather than disqualifying me from reviewing this book, however, all
of these things should make you listen a bit closer to what I have to
say. Especially if you come from California, where the injustices that
Keith LaMar outlines in this book, and the severe consequences of such
injustices, are all too familiar.
Some readers of San Francisco Bay View may have read an article
I published in this newspaper about my friend Todd Ashker, a member of
the “Short Corridor Collective” in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of
Pelican Bay State Prison. Keith LaMar has a lot in common with Todd
Ashker.
They both grew up in poverty raised by single mothers, Keith in East
Cleveland and Todd in Colorado and California. They both fell into petty
crime as young kids, a fate that has visited millions of poor young
people in this country regardless of their ethnic background. They both
would be free today if the prison authorities of Ohio and California had
not created policies to isolate “difficult” prisoners who refuse to
become snitches and instead choose to practice solidarity with other
prisoners.
As you will see when you read this book, Keith was never a member of
any prison gang. Yet the state of Ohio put together a case against him,
saying that he was the “godfather” behind a death squad that murdered a
group of prisoners during the Lucasville uprising of 1993.
Although the state of Ohio offered to exonerate him of responsibility
for the prison murders if he snitched against other prisoners, some of
whom were in a prison gang called the Black Gangster Disciples, he
refused to snitch. One of the men, who the state admits did some
hands-on killings and ordered others, agreed to such a deal and avoided
punishment.
The state of Ohio hid exculpatory evidence from Keith LaMar before
his trial. They held the trial in a practically all-white town in
southern Ohio to ensure that he could not have a jury of his peers. As a
result of his refusal to admit to something he did not do, and to
“debrief” against other prisoners, Keith LaMar has been in strict
solitary confinement for more than 20 years.

Keith was
never a member of any prison gang. Yet the state of Ohio put together a
case against him, saying that he was the “godfather” behind a death
squad that murdered a group of prisoners during the Lucasville uprising
of 1993.

Todd Ashker never murdered anyone in jail, either. I’ve corresponded
with him and visited him over the years, and he has always insisted that
he was never a member of a prison gang. He may have done some stupid
things as a young man and collected some stupid tattoos but I have no
doubts about his claims that he was never in a gang. Various prison
officials, shyster lawyers, and newspaper reporters have spread that
malicious lie.
Yet like Keith LaMar, because Todd Ashker refused to lie down and be a
compliant prisoner, and because he actively showed solidarity with
other prisoners and helped them to claim their rights as human beings
instead of debriefing, the state of California launched a vendetta
against him.
Unlike Keith LaMar, however, the California authorities didn’t even
have to go through the charade of an unfair trial against Todd Ashker.
They just committed him to solitary confinement, first in Folsom Prison
and then in the infamous SHU of Pelican Bay, by an administrative edict
they call “validation.”

Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar) – in shackles

There is a crucial difference between Keith LaMar and Todd Ashker,
however. Keith LaMar faces execution if he does not get the right to
“discover” the evidence that was held back from him by a cheating
prosecution. In Ohio they currently try to kill one man a month by
lethal injection and Keith will continue to live what the sociologist
Erving Goffman called a “social death,” confined in his 8-by-10-foot
cell without human contact, until they finally take him to the death
chamber, place him on the gurney and pump poison through his veins.
The last time Ohio did this, just a month ago, it took them 26
minutes to kill their victim with an untested concoction of chemicals.
Dennis McGuire “gasped, made snorting sounds and repeatedly opened and
shut his mouth” until he finally, mercifully, succumbed.

Keith
LaMar faces execution if he does not get the right to “discover” the
evidence that was held back from him by a cheating prosecution.

This is what Keith LaMar will face unless he either wins his case in
his last appeal, soon to take place in Cincinnati, or a judge gives him
the right to review the evidence the state withheld and pursue a fairer
trial. Even if he wins in his legal proceedings, though, Keith LaMar
will face the same future as Todd Ashker: execution by solitary. He will
grow into an old man in his condition of social death, until age or
possibly disease does the job that the state of Ohio wanted, but was not
allowed, to do. That is a best case scenario!
Yet, as Keith LaMar relates in his riveting book, “Condemned,” he
like millions of other indigent prisoners around the United States faces
one last injustice: lack of access to legal counsel in whom he has
trust. The indigent prisoner must take who he gets for lawyers. They may
be good; they may be bad. But they will always be overworked and
underfunded.
And the result is a litany of poorly written briefs that are
cut-and-pasted from one client’s case to another’s, failure to submit
briefs on time and failure to submit briefs at all – possibly with the
lawyers’ insistence that they are “acting in the best interests of the
client.” The last chapter of “Condemned” is a heartbreaking account of a
man caught up in such a vortex, being pulled down by forces outside of
his own control, losing faith in the people he most needs to trust,
facing the possible inevitability of execution for something he insists
that he did not do.
I should not end on a low note, however. For the thread that runs
throughout “Condemned” is a most amazing theme of discovery and
redemption. Somewhere along the way, over decades of injustice, solitary
isolation, kangaroo courts, alienating legal relationships, violence
against guards and violence by guards against him, Keith LaMar “finds
himself.”
He is put to the test and he refuses to tell a lie. He will not give
up his soul in order to save his skin. He discovers love in some
remarkable people outside of prison who show kindness and support for
him but, most of all, in fellow inmates such as Jason Robb, his closest
friend, who, like him, faces execution because he refused to snitch on
other prisoners.

Keith finds his personal answer to “man’s search for meaning,” as
Victor Frankl puts it: Know yourself, be true to yourself. He has taken
chances and perhaps risked losing friends by insisting that he must tell
his full story, including some episodes that do not reflect well on
himself.
That full story is beautifully told in “Condemned,” from the 1993
Lucasville uprising, through the trial, through early isolation and then
into the giant new supermax outside of Youngstown, Ohio, a prison that
was built to house Keith LaMar and the four others who were unjustly
condemned to die after the Lucasville uprising.

Read this
book. You’ll begin to understand why men and women insist on coming
together to understand and help each other. They do it even at the risk
of their lives and their physical freedom. Yet in doing so they become
truly free.

Keith LaMar, Bomani Shakur, found himself in that darkest of places,
that inhumane invention of the greatest superpower in the world: the
supermax prison. In early 2011, he and Jason Robb and Siddique Abdullah
Hasan – African-American, white, Muslim – launched a hunger strike for
the right to touch their families and friends on open visits.
They won. The word spread to the SHU of Pelican Bay, to Menard
Correctional Institute in Illinois, across the country where this cruel
practice of supermax isolation remains. Todd Ashker heard the call, as
did Arturo Castellanos, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Antonio Guillen and
30,000 others.
Read this book. You’ll begin to understand why men and women insist
on coming together to understand and help each other. They do it even at
the risk of their lives and their physical freedom. Yet in doing so
they become truly free.Denis O’Hearn teaches sociology at Binghamton University in New
York and is the author of “Nothing but an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands,
the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation.” He can be reached at
denisohearn@gmail.com. “Condemned,” published by CreateSpace, is available on Amazon for $12.93.

Help release ‘Condemned’

Activist and Bomani supporter Ben Turk writes: “You can help us get a
first batch of books together, and secure your copy by donating to this indiegogo campaign (http://igg.me/at/KeithLaMar/x/600177).
If we can raise $880, that’ll buy us 250 books for events and outreach
to media outlets, bookstores and other folks who need to get their hands
on a copy ASAP!

Host an event

“We’re still waiting for the date for oral arguments on Keith’s final
appeal of the death sentence. But we don’t have to just wait, we can
use the time we have now to plant seeds of a national mobilization that
could pressure these judges and lawyers into a favorable decision that
should build momentum toward the general amnesty we seek.
“Please take a minute to think about communities you could share this
information with: your school, church, book club, friends and family.
Hosting an event is easy, and you don’t have to be an expert on the
Lucasville Uprising, because one of the prisoners who was there will be
able to call in and answer questions. Whether you’d like to do a film
screening, a reading from ‘Condemned’ or anything else, we’d love to
make it easy for you. We can lend you a stack of literature to have on
hand during the event, set you up temporarily with an approved phone
number for Keith, Hasan or Jason to call in to, and get you a copy of
‘The Shadow of Lucasville.’”
Just contact Ben and he’ll make it happen: 614-704-4699 or insurgent.ben@gmail.com.

Message from Bomani

I’m reaching out to inform you all that I finally finished my book,
“Condemned.” My case will be coming up for oral arguments sometime in
the near future.
My hope is that after reading my book you will feel compelled to join
me in my efforts to stay alive. More than that, my hope is that I can
somehow use what has happened to me as an illustration of what can
happen to any poor person in America.
In a real sense then, this book isn’t just about me or about what
happened to these men after a prison uprising. It’s about all of us.
What happened to me can happen to you. Especially if you are poor.
Especially if you are a minority. Especially if you are alone … or at
least feel that you’re alone.
Writing this book and talking to various people around the country,
I’ve learned that I am not by myself in this struggle and my hope is
that in sharing this book with you all, that you all will come away with
the same feeling: that we’re not alone. We’re not divided.
Really, contrary to what those in power would have us believe, there
are more of us than there are of them. If we’d just turn around and look
to the next person we will see that. We will also see that it is only
when we have compassion and understanding for each other that we can do
something about the pain and struggle that we are all engaged in.
I hope that you can get this book and share it with your friends and
family, and that we can meet again soon and talk about these things.
Peace,Keith Lamar (Bomani Shakur)